To catch a thief: The ongoing dilemma for museums after high-profile heists
Recent raids on museums and galleries have exposed the limits of modern security methods. Andrew Mueller, our presenter for ‘The Foreign Desk’, offers a modest proposal.
Stealing irreplaceable pieces of national heritage should be far harder than it looks. In March burglars broke into the Magnani Rocca Foundation in Parma and made off with three paintings – works by Matisse, Renoir and Cézanne. Last October bandits spirited eight items of France’s crown jewels out of a window at the Louvre, escaping by taking the furniture lift that they had used to gain access.
The Louvre was built as a fortress. Given the valuables that it protects, most would have assumed that it still functioned as one. But enquiries after the heist revealed stunning complacency: 61 per cent of its galleries had no CCTV and the password to access video surveillance turned out to be “Louvre”.
For more from Andrew Mueller, tune in to ‘The Foreign Desk’ on Monocle Radio.
